(Belated) End-of-Week Elmore (7/5/13)

Um...no thanks.

 

Hi, kids. Sorry I missed posting my EoWE last Friday. Fourth of July, and all that jazz. Blame the founding fathers. Anyway, I'm sure nobody was devastated by the delay.

 

Sooooo...there's some stuff on my mind...where to start? Let me just get into it:

 

I'm getting more and more frustrated with myself, when it comes to roleplaying. I'm getting tired of the little pestering voice inside my head that continually insists that I must stick to D&D and all its incarnations. I'm getting sick and tired, folks.

 

I mean, forget Gamer ADD. I think I have a serious case of Gamer OCD. I'm not kidding.

 

OK, time for some self-brainstorming:

• I think I need a break from high fantasy (the illo above screams high fantasy to me...and is giving me the shakes from the overload!)
• Despite the little D&D voice inside, I'm getting tired of (what I consider to be) the clunky-ness of D&D's mechanics. This even extends to the Troll Lord Games flavor of D&D (i.e. Castles & Crusades), which is arguably a more streamlined version of the rules (with a unified, "roll-high" mechanic).
• I need to keep chanting some sort of mantra regarding how I shouldn't be fixated on needing the old-school art to inspire me. I just need to streamline that statement into a non-awkward mantra!
• Seriously, I'm really feeling dumb when it comes to my obsession with art and roleplaying.  
• I need to stop letting all the fiction I read (especially fantasy fiction) influence what I want to do with games I am running/want to run. I mean, I can get ideas from what I read, but I shouldn't feel like "I need to run a game in this novel's world!" I have a tendency to do that...a tendency that extends back from my present all the way to my first days of roleplaying as a teenager.

All of the above, to me, are tell-tale signs that my nostalgia is shifting over to the "bad" kind. The kind that is stunting my enjoyment of roleplaying.

 

I am primarily a GM by nature. I am most comfortable and happy when running games. But I think it's time that I give myself over to my yearnings to run something other than D&D or any of its clones.

 

That's why I was so intrigued when, during a recent conversation with the proprietor of my FLGS, the topic of Dragon Age RPG came up. I've talked on this blog about my strong interest in Dragon Age. Well, my recent conversation involved the possibility of running some Dragon Age in order to drum up interest in the system. Color me intrigued, to say the least...

 

Man, I really want Green Ronin to put out a non-setting-specific version of their AGE System. I really like the system. It hits some good mechanics spots for me, it seems. Reading them, I feel like they would be fairly easy for me to adjudicate. I think this is all a function of my current life situation. For me, D&D requires more mental jujitsu to adjudicate things on the fly. C&C is much easier than traditional D&D and clones like Labyrinth Lord when it comes to rulings. But, Dragon Age appears to make things even easier to rule when players do what they do best: throw you curveballs. I want a system that allows me to look forward to those curveballs, rather than worry about how I'm going to handle them. I think Dragon Age will help me love the curveballs again.

 

Anyway...this is all not to say that I'm washing my hands of D&D-type games forever. Perish the thought. BUT, I do think I need to take a break from them.

 

OK, time to go meditate...